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Monday, March 28, 2016

Sermon for Maundy Thursday, "New Commandment," John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Sermon 3/24/16

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

New Commandment - Maundy Thursday

On
Maundy Thursday, we gather to remember two significant events that Jesus shared
with his disciples. Matthew, Mark, and Luke recount Jesus sharing a Passover
meal with the disciples and reimagining the symbols of bread and cup for them
to be Jesus’ very body, broken for them, Jesus’ very blood, poured out for
them. It is a foreshadowing of the breaking and bleeding of his body that will
happen less than twenty-four hours from the time they share in the meal. It is
a way that Jesus makes them – and us – a part of this breaking and bleeding.
We, the body of Christ, are broken and poured out too, as he calls us to be the
body of Christ for the world. Jesus says this is a new covenant he makes with
us, a sign of forgiveness, and he calls us to remember every time we’re at the table together.

In
John, we get a different story, deeply meaningful in its own way. Jesus is
sharing Passover with his disciples. John tells us that Jesus, knowing that God
had put all things into his hands, that he had come from God, and was going to
God, possessed with all that comforting knowledge, Jesus gets up, and ties a
towel around himself, and begins to wash the disciples feet. We don’t know how
any of them received this gesture, except for Peter, who questioned, seemingly
with disapproval – “Lord, as you going
to wash my feet?” Jesus tells him
Peter will understand eventually. “You will never
wash my feet,” Peter declares. Jesus tells Peter that if he wants to be part of
Jesus, to share with Jesus, Peter must be washed by Jesus. Peter swings like a
pendulum then, saying, “Well then, wash my hands and head too!” But Jesus tells
him that the feet are enough.

After
finishing the footwashing, Jesus says that he has set an example. If we call
him Teacher and Lord and mean it, we
ought to do what he does – wash one another’s feet. Because we’re servants,
messengers, not greater than the master, the one who sent us. As Christ’s
servants and students, we’re meant to do what he does. Then Jesus says that
we’re to follow the new commandment he gives us: to love one another. Just as Jesus has loved us, we’re to
love one another. That’s how we’ll show that we are disciples. That’s where we
get the name “Maundy Thursday” from. We get the word mandate from Maundy – a new mandate, a new commandment. But we know
that, right? We’re supposed to love one another, and follow the example of
Jesus? Aren’t we taught that from childhood? Love God, love one another. That
doesn’t sound very new. But the way Jesus says it, and the significance he
gives to it by adding it with this footwashing – he’s telling the disciples
that he’s telling them something different – or to do something differently –
than he’s seen from them so far.

One
of the traditional Maundy Thursday worship practices, then, is a footwashing, where
the pastor or other leaders of the congregation wash the feet of those in
attendance, or at least the feet of a symbolic few. Every year since Pope
Francis became the pope in the Catholic Church I have watched videos of him
washing the feet of an ever widening circle of people, in a traditional that
used to include the Pope washing the feet of 12 Catholic men. But the pope has
now washed the feet of women and girls, the poor, and those of different faith
traditions, or no faith tradition.
This year he washed the feet of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian refugees living in
shelter in Rome. Have you ever had your feet washed by someone? When I was just
about to be ordained, the Bishop, Bishop Violet Fisher, invited all of us to be
ordained to a retreat for the day, and she washed our feet. I remember people
feeling awkward and uncomfortable – what about those who had worn stockings?
What if we felt embarrassed by our feet? What if our feet didn’t smell like
perfume? But she washed our feet.

I’ve
been thinking a lot about this strange practice – footwashing – and what Jesus
means for us to learn from it. We talked a bit about his practice a couple
weeks ago, when we talked about Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet.
Footwashing was common, because of the hot, dusty climate, and long travel on
foot with only sandals for footwear. You washed your feet when you entered a
home. But you washed your own feet. Or a slave washed them. A humble task. A
menial task you wouldn’t ask someone else to do unless you considered them of
such low status that it wouldn’t matter if they washed your feet.

What,
in today’s world, is like footwashing? Jesus tells us to wash one another’s
feet, to do for one another what he does for us. But we don’t wash feet today
in the same way. It is no longer common practice. And so I’ve been wondering, what
is an "equivalent" to footwashing today? I think about the place
washing one's own feet had in Jesus' society, and who would usually wash
someone's feet (Not a peer! Certainly not your Teacher!), and I wonder if we
have anything other practices today that would be as compelling. If Jesus was
demonstrating this kind of sacred act of servanthood today, would he wash feet,
or would he do something else? I posed these questions on facebook and got some
excellent answers. “Helping someone pack and move.” “Hearing a
confession.” “Cooking and serving [someone] a meal.” “Getting the Upper Room
ready for the meal … [The] hot sweaty work of moving tables, scrubbing floors,
cleaning the bathroom, taking out the garbage.” “Clipping someone’s toenails.”

One pastor
colleague wrote, “Our sense of physical space is so much wider/bigger than in
the days of footwashing as a regular part of people's lives. I think of the
ways we experience those intimate, humbling moments- I fed an 88 year old woman
at the hospital yesterday, coaxing her one bite at a time. Her eyes looked at
me with such trust and weariness.” Another said, “This question makes me think
of the hierarchy of servants at Downtown Abbey. I cannot imagine Lord Granthem
shining the shoes of his footmen.”

Another: “On a mission trip to Baja California last
summer, working with kids of migrant farmworkers, we treated many of the kids
for lice by putting mayonnaise in their hair, letting is sit for an hour, and
then washing their hair and combing it out. It was a strange and intimate
experience, and much more beautiful than I'd expected.”

A friend
named MaryBeth wrote, “The parallel that has seized my imagination is helping
elderly folks care for their feet. My mom can't reach her feet to cut her nails
and I'm terrible at it (and I live 250 miles away from her.)” And another
responded, “I was thinking what MaryBeth said. Then I was watching the people
doing pedicures while I was standing in line at Walmart tonight. That would
make it to my list.”

Another: “Thankless tasks: baggage handlers, bagging
groceries, pumping gas, serving fast food, custodians. Jobs that people don't
notice until they are done incorrectly [at minimum wage]. I think many
volunteer opportunities or jobs that care for people are given recognition in
prestige or honored by their peers, but would we notice who was doing those
jobs that are done while we check our phone/daydream/talk to [our] companions?”
(1)

At the Greenhouses in Rochester, one of our nurses said
that she always looks at the feet of the elders who live in the house. At the
memorial of one of our elders, she commented on how devoted the daughter was to
Helen, who had died, which the nurse knew because Helen’s feet always looked
beautiful and soft and cared for. An act of love from daughter to mother.

Jesus says that this is how we demonstrate love as his
disciples: that we would offer the same acts of loving service – the sometimes
menial or difficult or dirty or back-breaking or humbling tasks that we would
normally only even consider for someone who was as close to us as our closest
of family members. This is how Jesus loves us. Enough to wash our feet, enough
to serve us in any way that’s like it. Enough to do that for every person, every
child of God.

Who do we serve?
Whose feet will we wash? Whose nails will we clip? Whose bathrooms will we
clean? Whose fast food will we serve? Whose hair would we comb for lice? Whose
floors will we scrub?

Jesus offers us the commandment – that we serve one
another, that we are known, marked as disciples because of the way we love. He
does this, says this, washes feet on the very night that he will be denied and
betrayed and abandoned by the same people
whose feet he washed. Clearly, there is nothing that can disqualify you as a recipient of the serving, loving hands of Jesus.
So too he commands us.

I think the footwashing of Maundy
Thursday catches us in a conundrum. We feel, whether we’ll admit it or not,
that there are others who are unworthy
to be served by us. Sure, we’ll wash
some feet if Jesus tells us we must – but we want to pick whose feet we wash. While
that might be serving, we’re not serving like
Jesus is. And if we don’t or won’t do it like he does, then we’re making
ourselves, the servants, greater than our master, Jesus. That won’t work.

And
on the other hand, we feel we’re unworthy to be served by Jesus. Would you be
able to let Jesus Christ kneel before you and wash your feet? The thought
brings tears to my eyes. How could we be worthy of such an act of love? We
can’t get the right answer because we’ve asked the wrong question. Worthy of Jesus washing our feet? He doesn’t do it
because we’re worthy of it or not. That’s not a question that’s on Jesus’
radar. He does it because he loves his
disciples. Because he loves us. Because he loves me. Because he loves you. Jesus
loves us. All of us.

We
all love. But what’s new about the new commandment is that Jesus says we’re
supposed to love one another just as he
has love us. In other words, we love through humble service. We love even
those who would deny and betray and ditch us. We love even those who no one
else seems to love. We love especially those who no one else seems to love. We
love those who have wronged us. Those who we think we’re better than. Without
conditions and qualifications and counting the cost and figuring out who is
worth it. We love as we serve. Just as I have loved you, Jesus says, you also
should love one another. When we do this, he says, people will know we’re his
disciples. They won’t need to ask. We won’t need the label. They’ll know.
They’ll see it in our love. Tell me, who knows you are a Jesus-follower, just
because of how you love? Amen.